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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24286504">Reincarnation is a bitch</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/'>Anonymous</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Undertale (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Multi, Past Lives, Reincarnation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 00:28:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,048</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24286504</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Cross has lost count of the number of times those words have crossed his mind, been spoken silently through lips he shouldn't have into the midnight darkness of his bedroom as he lay awake thinking about what he's lost.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Anonymous</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Reincarnation is a bitch</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>"███?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It's particularly bad today. Cross doesn't know what set him off but... He nods in acknowledgment of the name he's had for the last 19 years and heads up to his room. It's as messy as it was when he left this morning. His mother's nagging does nothing to convince him to tidy. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The thought that Nightmare would want him to put things away is far more motivating. If only Nightmare could see it, he might actually do something. As it is, he puts away a few things. He clears his floor. It's a little better. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Making his bed makes all the difference, he notes. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>His mantra? Whatever it is, he says it to himself again as he sits in the middle of his room, trying to keep from crying. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>"Reincarnation is a bitch." </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It's not a poetic sentence. It doesn't really have a deeper meaning. It just holds true for Cross. Calling the thing that causes him so much pain a bitch is comforting. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He holds his son's face in his mind. It would be comforting if only his memories would clear up. If the fog keeping him from them lifted. He doesn't think he could handle all of that. The kid would have been about how old he is now, back when he died. He's sorry he left him so young. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>His son's image is always clearest when he remembers that expression of fear. Cross hates that. How many fights did Dream pull that same expression to throw Cross off?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He doesn't know, and he doesn't want to know. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He falls back and starts tracing his ribs, down to a lower rib on the right of his ribcage. He pokes it through the squishy flesh. There should be nothing but space. He lost that one. It shouldn't be there it shouldn't be there it shouldn't be there. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>His mind fills with whispers of white hot, blinding pain that he's glad he doesn't truly remember feeling. There's fog. He misses the way magic sparked through his bones, back when he was magic and dust. He misses his weird, patchwork soul. He misses a soul cracked, broken, hardly held together. He misses a soul shining red, always visible. He misses a soul flickering in and out of existence erratically. He misses a soul in the shape of a fruit, dripping dark negativity that even now, still weighs on his soul comfortingly. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He goes over the children in his head, smiling at the image of the oldest two bickering over something dumb for the millionth time. And the youngest winding them up for fun. He counts seven. There should be eight. He counts again, tense. He'd forgotten Hope in his counting, since he'd started with him.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>All is wrong with the world, but he's here. Alive. Breathing - and what an oddity breathing is! Cross didn't need to breathe last time he was alive. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He wants so desperately for someone from before to find him - anyone!</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He wants so desperately if they are out there in this world, for them to never remember. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Remembering hurts. Bits and pieces of half-there memories, pieced together slowly as the fog fades just slightly while you chase after it. He doesn't want them to hurt. The most painful memories are always the clearest. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Cross lies on the floor, hand over the rib that should be missing, hair he shouldn't have a mess and clothes creased where he lays on them. He's glad though, that at least he's never felt as lonely here as he did in the broken remains of XTale. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It's a close second. In all the lifetimes he grabs at the memories for, he's been surrounded by people. Now, he has his mother, a few acquaintances at college, and little else. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He considers sleeping away the pain. He doesn't usually dwell on it like this. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He thinks he ought to at least be able to dream of being there, but he didn't dream then either. He hadn't wanted to. He wonders if that's why he doesn't now.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>There’s so much to do though. He used to be smart. Sometimes he gets flashes of memories of things that were true in other lives but aren’t now. It’s frustrating, understanding things that don’t apply. He has homework. Science works differently now, at least numbers don’t change. They weren’t important to him before, but they are now.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He’s not sure what language they used to speak, he doesn’t think it was english. But he doesn’t know, that part is foggy too.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He knows he’s a different person now, or is he - he went through so many personalities with overwrite. It’s hard to say. But he’s not the person he was when he died. Cross can’t help but wonder if the others would even like him if they knew him now, though he loves them all desperately. He imagines they’ve changed too. Would he even recognise them if he met them now? Would he love them?</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>What if, he thinks to himself, what if Crescent and Hope get along like a house on fire now. The thought almost makes him laugh.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It's hard to say when he finally starts laughing, something about his current situation hits him and he cracks up.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>What a fun world to be living in now, where the place he once called home is considered mere fiction. Where the place that was filled with love and warmth and the pitter-patter of tiny skeleton feet is seen as somewhere cold and impersonal. Where people think he could find love with Dream, because Nightmare is evil, because Dream is kind and caring, because in this world's fiction, that's very much true. Dream didn't try to kill him, Dream doesn't manipulate, Dream didn't abandon their son in some random AU to make his own way in the multiverse long before Cross even knew he existed.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>It stings worse, Cross finds, when he sees art of the people he loves being shipped with Dream. Despite everything Dream put him through.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Later, when Cross goes to sleep, he does so holding a pillow tightly, trying to imagine he's being held. It doesn't work, of course, the pillow is far too soft and giving compared to the hard bone he wishes he could feel.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Reincarnation is a bitch.</span>
</p>
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